Category: Art

It surprises me sometimes when I see the number of writing forums where people are offered prompts. Sometimes these prompts are offered to elicit pieces with a common theme. In that case, the writing is almost a creative Rorschach test. Outcomes are compared and we gain insight into the writers through their interpretation of the prompt.

Sometimes, however, prompts are offered because people lack ideas. The prospective authors need a little push, kindling to get the creative fires burning. This deficit of ideas perplexes me.

Where is the child who lacks ideas? That child does not exist. Children’s imaginations are so rich that sometimes they get lost in their imagined worlds. We may come upon them in a kind of reverie, as they entertain people, or creatures, who are invisible to us.

What happens to the child’s imagination? Does the child willingly leave it behind, or is it ‘schooled’ out of existence by parents, teachers and counselors?

It seems the effort to stultify imagination has increased in recent years. There’s no time for art, for music, for self-expression. These are trivial pursuits and are gradually being erased from school curricula.

Parents follow suit. They must prepare their children for the ‘real’ world: math, technology, science, computers. These will be the tools necessary for survival in the modern economy.

But there is something overlooked. Each of these fields is fueled by ideas. The leaders in these fields will be creatives, those who can imagine what others cannot see. The Einsteins, the Curies and the Pasteurs worked hard, but they imagined horizons beyond those that already existed.

As we prepare our children to lead rich lives and to become leaders–innovators–in society, we must not train them to be drones. They should not think of themselves as filling a mold, but as, perhaps creating a new form.

I don’t think the fire of inspiration–imagination–dies a natural death. I don’t think people, as a matter of course and a reflection of maturity, run out of ideas. I think this wonderful gift is ‘trained’ out of them.

Perhaps, if we find ourselves in need of prompts, we might retrain our minds. We might spend time doing nothing but thinking and imagining. If we give our minds a chance, we might be able to reawaken the child in each of us.

If you look closely at these lovely animals, you’ll see that they’re blinking. This is another one of my collages, created for a collage-making contest on Steemit. I wish I could share what some of the other participants in the contest came up with. Some entries are absolutely brilliant.

The contest, edition #20, is in progress right now. I haven’t got a chance of winning, but that’s not why I enter. I enter because it’s fun. Writing uses one set of muscles. Creating a picture, coming up with a concept and putting all the elements together, that calls on another set of muscles.

I just love looking at the animals in my collage, who are looking back at me. The picture is made of three parts. The wistful animal at the top was provided by @shaka, who runs this contest most weeks on Steemit. The lamb was taken from a Pixabay picture, and the resting cattle were from another Pixabay pixture. The hard part was getting the grass from the separate pictures to blend. I used GIMP (photo manipulation program) to do that.

If you’ve read this far, you deserve a treat. So here it is, a video of a sweet, very young goat that really wants to get another pet under the chin:

This is a digitally constructed collage. I put together pieces from different classic Chinese paintings and tried to mimic the style of a fourteen-century literati artist.

I’ve done research on China in the past, especially Chinese traditional art, and have written about it here and here. This week I decided to start writing a new book about China. I will use art as a reference point and bracket that reference between two centuries–the fourteenth and twentieth. And I will focus my attention on one city that just happens to straddle the Yangzte River: Chongqing.

It was Chongqing that became the last stronghold of the free Chinese in WWII (Second Sino-Japanese War). And it was there that fierce resistance by the Southern Song Dynasty held invading Mongols off for years.

Why art? Because in China, art has been a vessel for culture and tradition. Through conquest and revolution, art has endured. I find that to be especially true in the literati tradition.

A Word About the Picture at the Top of the Page

The picture was prompted by a contest on Steemit, which I enter every time it’s open. In the contest we are challenged by a fellow Steemian, @shaka, to make a collage from one of his photos. Rank amateurs (like me) and graphic artists participate. Sometimes a good idea prevails over skill…that gives me hope. However, I don’t enter to win. I enter to have fun.

Here’s @shaka’s photo, as it appeared before I made the collage:

Here are the elements that went into my collage:

[By the way, emulating, or even copying an artist is considered to be an homage, in the literati tradition]